It's been a bit busy....and a celebration cake...

Wow....it's been so busy...ridiculously busy actually. Have had lots going on the last few weeks. Got back from our cruise a week ago, and have had Michael's 21st birthday party at home the next day, have also had Damian's mum's 75th birthday the weekend just gone, as well as our niece's 18th birthday, and did the flowers for 3 weddings on the weekend as well, oh, and Fathers Day yesterday! Today, I have decided to take the day off. Damian and Michael will be away for the week at work, so just the 3 of us left here at home, so some peace and quiet. Today I have had too many cups of tea to count, and I have been lazing about on the lounge catching up on computer land...this is the first lazy day I have had in...I don't remember, I have still done the washing and cleaned the bathrooms, but that has been in between being lazy...during all of the chaos and busyness of last week, I spent a couple of nights doing a celebration cake for Damian's mum's birthday.  It is certainly very bright and colourful, but I figured it's a celebration cake, it needs to be colourful! It has given me lots of experience now in the fundamentals of putting a 2 tiered cake together, and I got the cake thickness much better for this cake, than I did for my first cake.  It also gave me some more experience in the decoration side of things, so I am gradually getting a bit more confidence with this cake decorating thing.

Cake decorating lesson 2

I went to another cake decorating class last night. I found someone much closer, and much cheaper as well! So I should be able to afford to attend more lessons now that the pricing is more reasonable. Last night's class was basic cake covering and piping. I just took along a chocolate cake, I had to make it in a bit of a rush, as I was just going to buy one from the supermarket, but could only find iced ones....so had to rush home 2 hours before class and make and bake a cake, and hope that it would cool on time...it did luckily. Purchasing a proper high sided cake tin is definitely on the cards to collect as part of my kit, so that the cake ends up nice and high, as a lot of our cakes last night weren't tall enough, but the end result still ended up nice. First they did a demo and showed us the basics on covering the cake, then it was our turn...first covering the cake...and then smoothing down the icing, and a bit of lustre sparkle was dusted over the icing for a bit of a shimmer...

Then we were shown the basics on shell piping, and then had a practice at doing that, then it was on to doing the piping on the cake, I'm happy with my first effort at shell piping...of course with more practice it would become better..

After this we practiced piping on their practice sheets. The cake was finished off like this at class. When I bought the cake home I finished decorating it with some flowers and leaves that I made at cake class number 1...these finished the cake off nicely...this cake could be used for any occasion really, a christening, a small wedding ceremony, a birthday celebration etc.

Kasey has made short work of it though....Muuuummmmm....can I pleeeeeaaaaaasssseeee have some cake?  Amazing how much nicer cake is with some yummy icing...

Cupcakes

I went to my first cake decorating class yesterday. I have started off with cupcakes, as it had a lot of techniques involved, and lots of decorating elements that can be transferred to bigger cakes. Quite expensive to do the class, so will only be doing 1 every month or 2 to get some more techniques under my belt. But had a fun day, and made some yummy cupcakes, and think I did quite well for my first attempt.

All of the decorations were made on the day, and the leaves and roses on the rose cupcake were all completely handmade, as were the little tiffany bows on the bow cupcakes,  the flowers and butterflys were made with a special punch. The aim is to eventually be able to add wedding cakes to the wedding flower side of things that I currently do. There are lots of beautiful classes that I can do, so I am looking forward to expanding on my skills. So, will have to go shopping now to get some tools to start off with....bugger, I hate buying things :)